The rise in temperature is due to the combination of El Nino
&mdash a weather pattern that's characterized by warmer-than
average water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean &mdash and
man-made climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions,
according to WMO.

"We expect 2016 to be the warmest year ever, primarily because of
climate change but around 25% because of El Niño,” Adam Scaife,
head of the Met Office's long-range forecasts,
told the Guardian on Sunday.

"The state of the global climate in 2015 will make history
as for a number of reasons," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud
said in a November statement."Levels of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere reached new highs and in the Northern hemisphere
spring 2015 the three-month global average concentration of CO2
crossed the 400 parts per million barrier for the first time.

He added: "2015 is likely to be the hottest year on record, with
ocean surface temperatures at the highest level since
measurements began.This is all
bad news for the planet."

This graph from the Met Office shows that global
temperatures are now more than 1°C above pre-industrialisation
(1850-1900) averages for the first time.Met Office

The FT notes that this study "is part of a relatively new and
still contentious branch of climate science" known as attribution
science, which "tries to determine possible connections by using
climate models and weather data."

Britain has been so warm this December that the previous record
monthly temperature has been smashed by more than 2 °C. The
average temperature this month has been 9.5°C, five degrees
higher than average, and way above the previous record set in
1934,
according to a report in the Financial Times.